


One Thought Away

by Diminua



Series: Slices Through the Heart [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Apocalypse, Aziraphale thinks in Italics and brackets., M/M, Mentioned Warlock Dowling, Pre-Slash, That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it., lots of cogitation first though, possibly, the rating is there because it will go up I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-17 09:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20618744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: Hey Aziraphale, if the rest of your friends decided to jump off a cliff....





	1. Chapter 1

Obviously, Aziraphale thinks, one of two things is happening.

Either this is ‘it’ – the temptation Crowley has been leading up to for centuries, millennia even, persuading Aziraphale to go against heaven and get himself in endless trouble.

Or, well, this is still ‘it’, but in the sense of Crowley rebelling against hell and getting himself killed.

Aziraphale doesn’t think he can cope with either of those options. Not sober anyway.

Not drunk either, it turns out.

Eleven years are the blink of an eye. Just long enough for an angel to get whiplash from changing his mind, repeatedly, about what he actually thinks, whom he actually trusts, and what in the name of everything holy and unholy, he is actually going to do.

On the one hand - as he sometimes reminds himself (reminds Crowley as well, since he seems to have conveniently forgotten) - Crowley is a demon. It is against his very nature to care about the things he says he cares about. On the other hand Aziraphale has seen him care. Borne, as they say, witness to it. Surely it couldn’t possibly_ all_ have been an act?

Or something Aziraphale saw because he wanted to see it. Because he’s invested in seeing the good in Crowley.

He’s invested in seeing the good in his fellow angels too, those beings supposedly full of heavenly compassion and celestial grace who don’t seem particularly bothered about the end of the world. Are quite upfront about how forgiving they will be when Aziraphale fails to stop it. [1]

Aziraphale knows he isn’t the person he was when they first sent him down here, but he’s fairly sure Gabriel wasn’t always this hard or Sandalphon such a tiresomely pedantic bully either. Of course they _had_ always thought people terribly messy. All that biology and gross matter.

It really is all _dreadfully_ confusing. When Crowley asks Aziraphale about killing Warlock his voice goes soft and velvet and oh so logical and the angel almost _wants_ to believe it’s a temptation. A temptation would make more sense than this boy with his silly straight fringe flopping in his face and his stupid black marker pen that the Crystal Palace Park Keepers will scrub off with a dab of nail polish remover really being a threat. Aziraphale’s mind stalls because he looks at Warlock and knows he _couldn’t_, and Crowley should know better than to suggest it.

Tick-tock, Aziraphale thinks. Crowley does something nice, then turns snarly and sarcastic. Seems to think there’s hope, and then wants to run away. 

Heaven, on the other hand, is quite spectacularly consistent. Aziraphale grows exhausted with repeating, over and over, that there doesn’t have to be a war and everyone doesn’t have to die.

That message should be a welcome one, surely?

Hope is guttering, like a candle. Wavering, like Aziraphale himself.

And finally Aziraphale is through.

He’s explained and apologised and talked sense until it hurt. He’s offered them an out they don’t really deserve, actually. And all it’s got him is patronised and fobbed off and smirked at and now, finally, barked orders. By a tinpot idiot with the sense of a can of beans.

A pathetic excuse for an angel? He’d like to see a good excuse for one.

The world is very bright, very serene as it turns in this almost empty space, rich with blues and greens and the ochre-gold of deserts. It’s hard to believe that in a few hours it will be nothing but a battleground.

He ignores yet another barked order to leave it alone [2] and wanders over to poke carefully at the atmosphere. There’s a soft hiss of sound, something like sand through an hourglass, and he feels the planet tug at his celestial form, swirl and stretch it as it spins.

Until, with a sharp snap – something like a parent snatching a child out of harm’s way - it gathers him in. Aziraphale finds himself tumbling through space, as subject to gravity as if he still had mass, skimming the mortal plane like a bird who hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet.

Down past the satellites and the clouds and the planes stacking and circling over Heathrow airport, down over the cars stuck on the north circular and the dog walkers in Kensington Gardens and the tourists being fleeced at St Paul’s and down, down, down (thankfully) straight to the pub where Crowley is.

[1] He pretends not to understand them. If they want him to just stand back and let the end of the world happen they ought to have the courage to say so, explicitly. Otherwise he’s going to use all the wriggle room he can get.

[2] Or something like that. He’s stopped listening by this point if he’s honest.


	2. Chapter 2

Once it’s over, Aziraphale doesn’t try to analyse how much use they actually were. The airbase was clearly where they were meant to be, and that is good enough.

‘Imagine how awful it might have been if we’d been at all competent.’ he says to Crowley, and leaves it there.

They’re still in Tadfield, sharing a bottle of wine, the width of a largish cardboard box with a pair of scales and a diadem neatly packed away between them, so that they have to reach across to pass the bottle back and forth. Normally Aziraphale would conjure up some wine glasses, just to maintain standards, but he thinks better of it this time. He’s already put that box down between them, goodness knows why. What he wants is to bridge the gap, not widen it.

He got flustered though. He’s sitting on his sword, since it seems as if a sword might be a useful thing to have in the next few days, but he very much doubts he’s going to get away with that [1]. In his pocket, tucked away in an old notebook with a sliding clasp, is the little slip of paper that fluttered out of Agnes’ book of prophecies and danced before his eyes. It has the feel of a forced card, but why should that be a worry for someone who has faith in the conjurer?

Take any card, take the best card She can deal you.

Perhaps there really is no such thing as free will.

Or perhaps there is, and that’s why everything is so messy.

Probably best not to speculate, really. He does have other things to worry about. Things down here at ground level. Things that maybe _are_ for him to understand.

Like Crowley, who he sits next to on the bus, breathing in the smell of seared steel and singed feathers that clings to the demon’s hair and skin. He really is a wonder, this creature who reminded him oh so gently that his bookshop has burnt down, who offered him a place to stay, who came – as far as Aziraphale can tell – just because he asked him to. Swaggering up. Falling to his knees. Being quite wonderful. 

‘I owe you an apology.’ It’s not what Aziraphale planned to say. It’s maybe what he should say, but what he’d planned was to be terribly practical. Perhaps it’s that pesky subconscious again. 

‘Hmm?’ Crowley is exhausted, takes a moment to register the angel’s words. ‘No you don’t.’

‘I do. Please. I wasted a lot of time on.. them. My side. Worrying that you were the threat. Refusing to admit to myself we care about the same things. I’m sorry.’

Crowley still seems bewildered, forehead furrowing, head tilting, baffled. ‘You don’t owe me anything, angel. If it wasn’t for you I would have scarpered.’

‘No you wouldn’t.’ Aziraphale becomes crisp, irritated by Crowley’s refusal to admit to good in himself. ‘Any more than you would have stood by and let me kill Warlock after running around after him for eleven years filling him up with rebellion and chocolate syrup. I don’t know why you insist on saying these things.’

‘Because it’s my job. Well, it was.’ Crowley turns to look out of the window again, trying not to worry if Warlock’s ok. He hadn’t realised that Hastur might check up on the Dowlings.

‘They’re going to come for us you know.’ He says instead. ‘Alpha Centuri wouldn’t be far enough now.’

‘I know. I have an idea about that, actually.’

Thus begins a long tiresome _wrangling_ argument which Aziraphale finally wins somewhere in the vicinity of Perivale, and then only once he manages to make Crowley believe that this is a perfectly equal exchange and that Aziraphale is in no less danger from heaven than Crowley is from hell.

‘Shake?’ Aziraphale says finally, holding out his hand. Crowley takes it. Doesn’t shake it. Looks at it as if it’s something new. Something strange. Then lifts it instead to his lips.

Aziraphale’s breath catches as the kiss is pressed to his knuckles, at the deliberate way Crowley is looking at him over his glasses.

‘Oh.’ 

Afterwards they sit quietly. He could do this forever, Aziraphale thinks. Just sit with Crowley in this moment, watching the brilliantly lit shop fronts of Notting Hill slip by.

It’s outrageous that anyone should want to take it from them. Should try to pull them apart from one another. His hand – his left this time – slips over to clasp Crowley’s right.

He’s denied it long enough. As long as he can hold on, he will.

[1] He doesn’t. The delivery man who turns up for the box knows what to look for, and because he knows a literal _deus ex machina_ when he sees one Aziraphale lets the sword go.


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley is circling the angel. He’s always done it, he realises, he just never normally notices that he’s doing it. Just as Aziraphale always smiles at ice cream vendors and has to repress it into something small and tight when he realises it’s not something Crowley does. 

Crowley doesn’t understand why they haven’t been taken yet. He walked to the bookshop alone this morning, a zigzag course down through Berkeley and then Golden Square. (He’s never cared for it. In a garden high over the Arno it would work. Here in London surrounded by equally grey buildings it doesn't.) Deliberately detouring past the Ritz to check it hadn’t changed. [1]

It had been so early that even Piccadilly had been quiet, just a couple of buses and one lone Westminster city employee driving a street sweeper.[2]

That would have been the perfect time to snatch him surely?

Or even earlier. Last night back at the flat, in the bedroom, with only the faintest suggestion of sulphur-yellow streetlights filtering through to paint highlights on pale skin and black silk. 

Crowley doesn’t think Aziraphale slept – he doesn’t think Aziraphale ever sleeps – but he had sat next to Crowley on the bed and stroked through Crowley’s hair with lazy, gentle movements, until the demon had dozed off, thinking how odd it was to be lying there in Aziraphale’s body, with what were technically his own fingers working through the short curls, still a little damp from the shower he’d taken although the angel’s new-minted body hadn’t really needed it.

There’s something luxurious about being in this body, with its soft skin and the dimples at the elbows and thighs; with the faint golden trail down his chest, more feathery than hair, only visible when it catches the light.

Crowley had ruthlessly resisted tracing that trail any further than the angel’s belly. Instead he’d set the shower to pulse, leaning against the granite tiles, letting it massage Aziraphale’s surprisingly broad shoulders, struck by – yes, something plush but... solid, grounded, in this body the angel has had for so many years. 

Or maybe it’s just that it belongs to Aziraphale, who Crowley sometimes just wants to sit naked on a velvet cushion and feed Turkish delight to.

Instead this morning there had been only one chaste closed-mouth kiss before he left, Aziraphale’s soft smile afterwards looking so odd to Crowley on his own face, with his serpent’s eyes and the hard red of his hair.

‘We’ll talk later, I promise.’ the angel had said.

It had been hard to let it rest there. To abandon that warmth. To leave Aziraphale behind in his flat, with his face, and know hell would come for him.

And where the hell _are_ hell, he’d like to know, as he circles Aziraphale and wonders if he’s finding the joints a little unruly and the whole thing not as stable as he’s used to (Crowley can’t get over how this body feels so _in balance_, like the centre of gravity is right where it should be, like it could stand upright all by itself. No wonder the angel didn’t fall over even when the bloody _ground_ reared up under their feet).

He’s still looking at Aziraphale when someone grabs him from behind. Is still looking at Aziraphale when the angel sees what’s happened and tries to give chase. Takes a crowbar or something to the back of his head and collapses.

Crowley tries not to fight too hard - this was the plan after all - but he doesn’t have to like it.

[1] He’s promised himself to take the angel there as soon as this is over. The same table they had eleven years ago, when it all kicked off. To order champagne and toast the continued existence of everything that matters.

[2] He’d given Crowley a wave, obviously thinking he was Aziraphale. Or Mr Fell. Or whatever the angel tells random council people he’s called these days. 


	4. Chapter 4

‘For my money the really big one is going to be all of us against all of them.’

Aziraphale startles, although on reflection he doesn’t know why. Now heaven and hell are talking, sending envoys, planning kidnappings together, how long can it be before they start co-operating in other ways? Demons are just fallen angels, when all is said and done. Look at Crowley, for whom being bad was more of a job (and maybe a part of his aesthetic) than anything inherent.

Look at Crowley, he thinks again, who has just included the whole of humanity in his concept of ‘our side’.

Who later toasts ‘the world’ and looks so happy, and Aziraphale finds himself bashful for a moment, almost breathless. They _do_ want the same things, then. The thought sets his heart glowing.

I love you, he thinks helplessly. Oh I do love you.. 

‘Will you come back to the shop after this?’

‘Do you want me to?’ by which Crowley quite obviously means, _tell me you want me to_.

Aziraphale is more than happy to indulge him. 

‘Of course. I have a very good sauternes I’d like your opinion on.’ He looks thoughtful a moment. ‘At least I think I still have it. If not we could always get something from that shop with the Octopus.’

Crowley, who hasn’t the faintest idea which shop is meant by this, or whether the octopus is alive or dead or made out of matchsticks or something, but is much too happy to care, just smiles. 

Piccadilly is heaving – like it should be. Tourists in anoraks in a steady stream out of Green Park tube, commuters snatching cups of tea in Pret, something being installed at the Royal Academy that requires a crane, the stop-start toot of horns as the lights change, more tourists coming out of Fortnums, strangely happy to have spent anything upward of twelve pounds fifty on a tin of biscuits. [1]

It was quite lovely to see – and even lovelier to take a sharp left and pursue a quieter, more sedate course through streets of quiet little art galleries and more risqué establishments. At some point, squeezing past a scaffold in a very narrow lane, they have to walk single file, and Aziraphale holds out his hand behind him for Crowley to take.

Neither of them could possibly get lost – they were here when these rather uniform Victorian triple storeys went up – but it’s something that sits deeper than that. If Aziraphale cannot see Crowley, he wants to touch him.

Some horrible little bug in the part of Crowley’s demonic conditioning that actually stuck protests the quickness with which he takes the angel’s hand.

He firmly ignores it, and doesn’t let go until they’re actually in front of the bookshop and Aziraphale is retrieving his keys.

[1] Some of them do play a tune though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ‘shop with the Octopus’ is the off licence in Old Compton Street, and it’s actually the kraken on the awning (from a popular brand of rum) that Aziraphale is thinking of.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mostly kissing..

Neither of them want to wait long enough for it to get awkward. Aziraphale ushers Crowley into the shop first – full of small politenesses – and then Crowley turns back just half a step, his sunglasses already in his hand and – well, then they’re kissing. Not the quick goodbye-and-good-luck kiss of this morning but something slow and intimate and invasive. Something new.

It feels inevitable, all the same. Like they’ve always been heading here, however impossible they might have thought it, however little rational sense it makes, somehow they were always already here, _in potentia_ as it were.

They only stop when they’re interrupted by the jangle of the bell above the door, and even then Aziraphale doesn’t actually let go. Only loosens his arm around Crowley’s waist a little.

‘Parcel for you next door.’ The man from _Intimate Books_ appears apologetic. He’s got two coffees in one of those recycled cardboard carrier things, and must have seen them come in on his way back to his own shop. He clearly hadn’t expected to interrupt anything important.

‘Yes, thank you. I’ll er.. I’ll come and get it.’ Aziraphale smiles, politely, and makes the man forget he saw either of them as soon as he’s firmly out on the pavement again. He’ll pick the parcel up tomorrow perhaps.

In the meantime he flicks the bookshop sign to ‘closed’ and ushers Crowley into the backroom while he gets the bottle and some glasses.

It does indeed appear that the bookshop is intact. Just a few extra books – children’s ones he notices, but possible first editions in good condition. The built-in larder he keeps his wine in is as well stocked as ever and his kitchen spotless of everything but the small patches of rust where the enamel on both the old cooker and the only slightly less ancient sink has worn through.

The glasses he wants for this wine sit on the kitchen windowsill next to a pink geranium and a row of old volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica[1] which remind Aziraphale that the only bed he owns currently has the rest of the encyclopaedia and the complete works of Robert Louis Stevenson on it.

And he's had it nigh on eighty years now, and it always did creak.

Although possibly it's terribly presumptuous of him to actually be worrying about this.

‘Angel?’ Crowley has spent at least a minute now telling himself he isn’t fretting, because that would be ridiculous, but there’s a definite unease about having Aziraphale out of his sight for _more_ than a minute.

‘Sorry. Just checking things are.. back to normal.’

‘Yeah sorry.’ Crowley looks awkward as Aziraphale bustles back with everything on a small tray. ‘I forgot. Did you want to..’ He tails off, because the obvious question is ‘did you want to look around’, which is silly because Aziraphale obviously doesn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to look around his own shop. The only other possible question is to ask if he wants Crowley to go, which is even sillier given that Aziraphale invited him in and is uncorking a very nice bottle of wine for them both.

‘It can wait.’ Aziraphale hands Crowley his drink and settles next to him on the sofa, and the demon gives up on whatever he was going to say.

He’s smiling quite absurdly again as they clink their glasses. They both are.

After the first sip though Aziraphale pulls a more serious face, holds the glass up to the light as if there’s something wrong.

‘I think this needs to breathe.’ He decides, turning and setting it down on a small table at his elbow. ‘May I?’ and he gently slides Crowley’s glass from his fingers also, taking his drink to put it with his own.

Crowley lets it go obediently. Is rewarded when Aziraphale’s fingers stroke down carefully over his jaw, coaxing him to turn just a little further so they can kiss again.

These would be lazy kisses if there weren’t so much latent heat in them. They kiss like they’ve got forever, and Crowley’s heart feels like it’s swelling in his chest.

By the time their lips part again Aziraphale’s arms are around his neck, and Crowley has slithered, somehow, free of his jacket without having to perform a miracle or break contact. Aziraphale hands him back his drink with a small, prim, mischievous smile, and loosens his bowtie and waistcoat, folding the latter neatly over the back of the couch. 

He pretends to struggle with his right cufflink and holds both wrists out as if in supplication.

‘Would you be so kind?’

Crowley has had two sips of his wine and he is already putting it down again so he can help the angel with his jewellery. This, he realises, is Aziraphale asking to be indulged. 

He rather likes it. It brings him back to his recurring fantasy of sitting the angel on a large, red, velvet cushion, quite naked, and feeding him Turkish delight absolutely caked in powdered sugar, so that the fine dust of it layers his fingers and drifts like talc to the dark velvet of the cushion and the paler velvet of the angel’s skin.

And anyway slow sips are the best way to drink sweet wine. Crowley will happily knock back a full bodied red, but there’s only so much peach-and-honey he can cope with at once.

The drink is pretty though, a deep gold, a renaissance colour. He takes another slow sip as Aziraphale settles against him, savouring his own glass. They both have to rearrange themselves a little to find a way to be perfectly comfortable and still be touching, but neither thinks for a moment of moving away.

‘Crowley.’ Aziraphale breaks the pleasant silence first. ‘Would you stay, tonight, if I asked?’

‘Yes.’ Said without hesitation. ‘Although. Do you actually _have_ a bed in this place?’

Aziraphale looks just the tiniest bit guilty. ‘I do, but it’s got volumes one to 18 of a cloth bound encyclopaedia on it.’

Crowley laughs. ‘Only you angel. Only you.’ He sounds terribly fond.

Aziraphale laughs too. _‘For which of my bad parts did you first fall in love with me?’ _He asks. He’s sure Crowley will remember this one. He always preferred the comedies.[2]

‘That’s my line.’ Crowley tells him. ‘Yours is: _For all of them at once, which maintain so politic a state of evil..’_

‘No. No, I won’t have that.’ Aziraphale is still laughing as he interrupts but his protests are semi-serious. ‘I won’t have that.’

‘_You and I are too wise to woo peaceably_.’ Crowley says. And kisses him yet again.

[1] It’s a terrible place to store books, really, what with the evaporation of water vapour and the bleaching effects of the sun. But they’re not valuable, just useful.

[2] The quotes are all from Act 5 Scene 2 of Much Ado about Nothing by their old friend Mr Wm Shakespeare.


	6. Chapter 6

In the end they decide to pull a couple of the large sofa cushions down on the floor. It’s a cosy spot, in front of the fireplace. Aziraphale has made a little nest down here before, on the thick Persian rug he bought back when Selfridges sold that sort of thing[1]. There are a few bricks of smokeless coal in a neat pyramid – they don’t give out much heat but they do look pretty – and he sets a match to them and puts up the old fashioned fireguard.

Crowley has spent too much time around fire – it was, after all, the only real form of heat and light in northern countries for many millennia – to take a scunner to it now, but he’s still glad to see the guard go up. He lets himself slip down with just his head on the sofa, forcing Aziraphale to step over his legs.

It’s not dark yet, but the brightness has gone out of a day that has been threatening rain since this morning[2], and Aziraphale puts the table lamp on before retrieving his drink and sitting, back straight, knees very slightly bent to support him. Crowley reaches out to touch the nearest – his left - tracing down, backwards, up the angel’s thigh, settling there, thumb stroking circles over the fine weave of his trousers.

Aziraphale takes another mouthful of wine – rather more than he meant to - and captures Crowley’s wayward hand with his own, bringing it up to his mouth to kiss it. On the back at first, and then, turning it slightly, the joint at the base of Crowley’s thumb, the wrist, just over his pulse. He feels fingers twitch against his own and looks up to find Crowley staring.

‘You’re stealing my lines again.’ He says, and moves closer to kiss the taste of wine from the angel’s mouth, suck it from his tongue. Finds, when he goes to pull away, that there are fingers twining in his hair, coaxing him to stay where he is, for more kisses - to his mouth and throat and the expanse of chest and rib and collarbone that his clothes leave bare.

‘Take this off.’ Aziraphale murmurs, pulling at the soft cotton of his dark shirt. Crowley does as he’s told.

Aziraphale leans forward, pouts when Crowley moves back again.

‘But I want to kiss your freckles.’ Galaxies cross Crowley’s chest, spill down his arms. So much to explore.

‘It’s my turn.’ Crowley tells him, already unbuttoning the angel’s shirt. The fact he’s already seen Aziraphale’s body naked takes nothing away from the slow reveal of his skin. It’s always more about the person in it, prettily blushing and looking coyly at Crowley through straight, white-gold lashes, as if uncertain of his charms.

There are muscles under the plump softness, under the velvet, but that just makes the softness all the more appealing. Crowley spreads Aziraphale out on the cushions and teases first with his tongue, provoking giggles and gasps of shocked pleasure; then kisses and lovebites, marking where Aziraphale was previously blemishless. 

He ends up straddling Aziraphale’s thigh, Aziraphale’s hands in his hair, turning the artful mess of it into an impossible birds nest. The heat has risen in them both now, and it has become something frantic, clinging, greedy. Legs entangling, and both of them able to tell that the other is biologically male, at present.

They press closer, rutting, finding a pace that works, Aziraphale’s hips arching off the floor, Crowley’s breath hot against his cheek.

Crowley shudders when he comes, full-body; trembles and hides his face in his angel’s neck, swearing softly.

Aziraphale is noisy, verbal, moaning Crowley’s name, clutching gluttonously at him. Afterwards he does, indeed, roll them over so he can press kisses all over Crowley’s freckles. Open mouthed kisses too, not just once but again and again.

Crowley doesn’t ask, but Aziraphale would tell him that he tastes like the season they’re just moving into, like the smoke from smouldering leaves and the no longer sharp sweetness of overripe apples. 

He moves his mouth over Crowley’s skin drowsily, drugging himself on taste and touch, pausing only to unfasten Crowley’s impossibly tight trousers.[3]

‘You shouldn’t..’

‘But I _want _to.’ says Aziraphale, who has spent quite enough time, thank you very much, being told what he should and shouldn’t do. ‘Unless you’d rather..’

‘Oh I’m loving it. I just thought..’

‘Well clearly I need to put a stop to your thinking.’

The demon chuckles, then gasps as Aziraphale’s mouth descends and embraces and sucks at his cock. The angel is careful, and gentle, and thorough, and it’s really not very long before Crowley is warning him and is swearing, again, as Aziraphale swallows as best he can and then sits up wiping his mouth and giggling with glee.

He pinches Crowleys unfinished glass of Sauternes and takes a sip to cleanse his palate as the demon recovers and sits up, pushing his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead.

‘I wanted to spoil you.’ he protests.

‘I can assure you I am certainly not feeling at all deprived.’ Aziraphale passes Crowley his glass to take a fortifying mouthful, crawls a foot and a half to get the bottle and tops it up before stealing it again. Crowley has scrambled out of his remaining clothes, and has shifted nearer to the fire to keep warm.

The amber light suits his skin, but he shakes his head when Aziraphale tries to give him the glass again.

‘Come here.’

He has Aziraphale not exactly in his lap, but his back is to Crowley’s chest, and Crowley’s legs are either side of him, and his arm warm around him, and the other hand raising the glass to Aziraphale’s lips, encouraging but not forcing him to sip the sweet golden wine.

And then, between one sip and another, there are long fingers unbuttoning him, slipping inside to stroke carefully, while kisses are pressed to his neck. Then Crowley offers him the glass again, and the sheer decadence would be wicked if there weren’t so much love, so much tenderness in Crowley as he coaxes his angel to let himself be pampered. He allows himself to fall back against Crowley’s chest, eyes fluttering half closed, touched and fed and coasting, luxuriously, slowly higher, breathing more shallowly as he grows harder under Crowley’s careful hands. Trusting.

The denouement is satisfying, and he’s liquid, boneless in Crowley’s arms, but still aware that Crowley is excited again, and he touches, soft and swift, and now Crowley is the one undone, exhausted, sprawling back on the cushions, pulling Aziraphale down with him, holding him close.

He has to wriggle an arm free to comb his fingers through Crowley’s hair (it’s an obsession, and he’s not ashamed) and there are soft, shallow kisses, whose promises are all for tomorrow, until Crowley drifts into sleep, his limbs growing loose and sprawling.

Aziraphale gave all his blankets away years ago but there is patchwork bedspread that he’s kept. It was a gift from the Manchester Women's Aid society (but that is another story) and is, like all his things, in good condition. He fetches it as soon as he is sure Crowley is well asleep, gently draping the handmade quilt over him, and pressing a final, very light, kiss to his brow.

Then he miracles his own clothes back on and sits on his denuded sofa on the last large cushion, reading a book of Elizabethan dramatists, with Crowley sleeping mere feet away, so peaceful, so lovely, his jaw unclenched and brow unfurrowed in sleep just as it was in sex.

Aziraphale wonders how many years of soft attentions it would take to soothe those lines and muscles into relaxing, into happiness, not only in sleep or orgasm, but day to day.

[1] Aziraphale had loved the heyday of the department store. Particularly the tearooms and soft furnishing departments. He’d positively enjoyed having to go to all those different counters and have a conversation with the sales assistant at each one.

[2] In London at least. It’s been a perfect late summer’s day in Tadfield, one of the last before the conkers start to drop and the air becomes crisp, the longer nights perfect for village bonfires and cocoa. 

[3] Aziraphale knows they can be taken off quite easily, because he’s done it while in Crowley’s body, but they still _look _impossible.


	7. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of wrapping up.. happy ending.

Crowley wakes at about his usual time, disorientated by the light and dimly aware that he’s been woken by some sort of noise. There is carpet under his knees, well-worn cushions that smell faintly of book dust against his cheek, and something very soft and light and scented with lavender and cedar over him.

It’s all very Aziraphale and therefore very soothing.

But where is Aziraphale? Crowley lifts his head, expecting to see him at his desk or hear him pottering around the small kitchen, but there’s only an empty mug that presumably contained tea, and the usual background noise of traffic and chatter as people pass the shop.

He cleans himself with a thought and has just scrambled back into his clothes (which he finds, apart from his jacket, neatly draped over the back of the sofa. His jacket, he notices, is on the old fashioned hatstand where the angel keeps his own) when he hears a key in the door, and the bell over it jingles.

‘Oh you’re awake. Good. I just popped next door to get this parcel.’ Aziraphale glances significantly over the top of the cardboard box, raising it up a bit so that Crowley can get a good look.

‘Hang on. Isn’t that..?’

It _is_ of course, Aziraphale recognised it as soon as the man next door lifted it over the counter to give to him. Exactly the same box that they handed to the delivery man the night before last. He sets it on his desk and pulls the tape away to confirm the contents.

‘But what’s the point of it?’ Crowley asks. ‘Why have someone take it just to send it back to you again?’

‘Perhaps they were afraid I might be tempted to use this.’ Aziraphale hefts the sword. It feels, as usual, horribly comfortable in his hand. Made for him, although he had never felt particularly made for it. ‘Or perhaps so no one else knows we have these things.’

‘No one besides..?’

‘Well, ourselves and whoever sent them of course.’

Crowley has opinions on that, but a ping from the direction of the hatstand interrupts before he can voice them.

‘Oh yes, your mobile telephone has been making a noise.’ the angel says.

‘Hmm.’ Crowley goes to retrieve it from his jacket pocket. Swipes his thumb over the lock screen.

Aziraphale, still considering the sword, doesn't see how his face lights up until Crowley takes four long strides back to him and shoves the device under his nose. ‘Look, Angel. Look.’

To be honest Aziraphale doesn’t know what he’s looking at, although he gathers from Crowley’s expression that he should be pleased. All he can see is a badly spelt word (possibly a nickname of some kind) and what looks like a stopwatch. Which has apparently been running for three hours 12 minutes and five seconds. Well six now. Now seven.

‘Sorry.’ He says, ‘What is this?’

‘It’s the app I installed to alert me if Warlock was sneaking out of bed to play on his PlayStation like a good little antichrist should. And he has now been playing Roblox for..’ Crowley glances at the screen quickly.

‘Three hours 12 minutes and about fifteen seconds.’ Aziraphale finishes.

‘Yes.’ Crowley looks positively smug. ‘Which means he’s alright.’

‘Apart from incipient myopia I suppose. You know, you’re terribly sweet when you’re..’

‘Stoppit. None of that.’ Old habits die hard.

‘Oh _you_ stop. Soppy old snake.’ Aziraphale teases, putting down the sword so that he can slip his arms around Crowley’s neck, his expression turning mischievous. ‘I don’t think I should open the shop today, do you? We could send Warlock one of those e-message things so he knows we haven’t forgotten him. And then, perhaps, have a nice lazy brunch on the way to the park to check the ducks are all present and correct? And after that wander back about two o clock for tea?’

‘Oh go on then.’ Crowley says. ‘Tempt me.’

**Author's Note:**

> _Peace is never more than one thought away_ – Ben Jonson


End file.
